Perhaps I can provide some thoughts on the topic.

Demand (I was an Economics major in college):

1. There are almost 302 million people in the US; 70% of them are on line, 211 million. Second, in terms of numbers, is China with 137 million people online (10% of total population). As you would expect, in terms of population penetration percentages (say that three times fast) combined with population, the US has the strongest online presence. Furthermore, according to comScore the 18+ demo is 100% online. Our customers and prospects are online.
2. 80% of folks online use the internet as a resource for health information: 168 million
3. 67% go to those folks go to the search engines FIRST: 113 million

There are 113 million people using the internet to look for health information.

It’s easy to find out your condition “demand” via searches and blog posts to start. A very active online condition is herpes, searched almost seven million times a year and 35,376 blog posts in the last 90 days.

OK, so I’ve spoken about this topic ad nauseam.

Supply:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)/organic search is not an imperative marketing initiative for the majority of the large pharmaceutical companies, as you can see in the research we just published. However, those pharma companies that have a cohesive SEO strategy have a clear cut competitive advantage. I know most of the pharma companies currently have a paid search strategy, however not many have a comprehensive organic strategy (more than just meta tags and title tags ).

Recently Enquiro published some search behavior research worth mentioning (Enquiro always has great research). The data demonstrated that people click on organic listings 100% of the time when they are researching and 50/50 paid and organic listing when buying. The research phase is an important one as we all know, reach a potential patient, caregiver early, higher in the buying funnel.

Thinking beyond acquisition, perhaps, for those that are on a drug and may not be satisfied and are doing more research, SEO could aid in compliance issues. I do not see a lot of pharma result in the first three pages of Google today.

ROI

comScore presented some ROI information at a CBI conference I attended in January. First they stated that according to their research, online strategies benefit the consumer by providing good information, better choices and high levels of satisfaction. They discussed their scope of benchmarks for the ROI analysis: 15+ studies over three years, 10+ Rx brands/therapeutic areas, $100 million - $3 billion brands, 7 pharma companies, all consumer no HCP.

Lots of good info, but the most important info is:

Visitors to brand.com/disease.com converted to a drug 5.6% higher than control
Patients to brand.com/disease.com have a significant incremental impact on adherence/next fill among existing patients, 18%.

“Organic search visitors tend to be the more qualified and therefore converts at a higher rate.”

So there you have it, an ROI model. The example comScore walked us through generated a 2:1 ROI (and yes that did include the cost of the site).

In a new media world, healthcare still trending toward the old, let’s impinge that trend.

Finally – Go Red Sox!